The Importance of Being Dangerous (24 page)

He sat back over his heels on the kitchen floor, a little crestfallen but ready to be mature about it. Michael clasped his hands together and rested them on his lap. “You call it, Sid. I respect whatever you want to do.”

THEY HAD TO GET AWAY TOGETHER
. While Michael waited for Sidarra's answer, somebody else would have to look after Raquel. Sidarra had never been more than an hour away from her baby, let alone in another country. Aunt Chickie was fast becoming the master of the house and, offended by the notion that she couldn't care for a ten-year-old, agreed to watch Raquel while Sidarra took a weekend away with Griff. It was her first vacation in many years. Griff explained only that he was starting to get a bad feeling and thought they should escape for some fun. When she asked what he thought of the news about Eagleton's death, he was quiet. Without mentioning Manny or Tyrell by name, Griff vaguely mentioned his suspicions about a botched robbery and shoot-out at a drug lab in Spanish Harlem. It was just a bad feeling, he said, and Raul seemed to have something to do with it, since he grew up around the block. Sidarra wanted no part of bad feelings. She
wanted only the feeling of being in love. To share it, they chose the one place Griff said he wanted to visit before he died: Belize.

The world visible below the clouds seemed to bend beneath her eye as the plane crossed borders she'd only heard existed. Short notice prevented them from getting a direct flight, so they had to connect through Chicago and travel straight down the continent. You could not see the border separating Mexico from Texas, but the pilot announced that it was there below. She held Griff's hand most of the way, though they sat in their dark shades and light colors and said very little. Behind their glasses, they looked worried and married; before them, cool. Sidarra stared downward at the earth. Her fingernails recorded everything new against Griff's palm, a huge glistening sea, a long deserted beach, sparsely covered mountains that dipped and tailed and peaked, then a vast flatness of scrappy greens and broken roads.

Griff leaned over and looked out for a minute with her. “It looks like the Southwest,” he said.

“I've never been.”

“I went there once, and I've crossed over it a few times on West Coast flights. Like it wants to be desert, but occasionally the plants win out over the dirt. It's almost ugly.”

“I wonder,” she said. “I have two brothers in the Southwest.” Sidarra tried to imagine what her own flesh and blood was thinking, living every day in a landscape like that.

Belize was not ugly. Whatever gnarled tropical woods preceded it was but a greater power's preparation. The lazy sands were multicolored, and the beaches free and unpeopled to the water. Miles of long, bending palm trees contorted and competed to touch the aquamarine waves first. When Griff and Sidarra reached their villa, a small bungalow nestled not far from the shore, they undressed and made love. The small, mosquito-netted bed squeaked and squealed under the humid dance of their bodies. Afterward they
drifted in the warm buoyancy of the water and let the sun impress them with a souvenir shine.

Sidarra had never been the curvaceous bronze figure strolling with the dark, handsome statue man on vacation commercials. She had not even prepared herself for that. The only thing they knew about the trip beforehand was that they had to go. They needed distance and clarity and, as Raquel would say, comfort. Undisturbed, they could think. They could be married or whoever they wanted to be. They could be wiser than fate as things changed back home, and they could talk about them.

But they didn't talk much. Not because Sidarra was afraid to know how Eagleton was killed, but because she was deliberately distracted. She and Griff went into town and watched people. They ate foods they should not have and lived to laugh about it. They raced each other in the sand. They held each other's body aloft in the water. They found simple things they'd never seen before in each other's faces and in the faces of the people walking proudly and slowly among them. The people walked so slow. The foliage raged supreme. The days lasted only as long as they were supposed to, and then the sun burned its way out again. That didn't seem to bother anybody. Sidarra had never known that. Why couldn't black folks all over do this? she briefly wondered. Then it was time to make love again.

Inside the cozy four-walled house there was a hammock. Off the room, blond levered doors opened to a small screened porch. Outside the bungalow, drums played a low drone from the beach. Bonfires sprayed with the rhythms. And on their last night together, as they curled naked in the swaying hammock, Griff finally started thinking like the lawyer he was. Against her back Sidarra could feel his heart speed up amid the drumming and mix badly. His head was active again. They were going home soon and Belize was starting to wear off of him. Sidarra pushed her bottom against
his pelvis and reached an arm over her own head to stroke his scalp. She was not yet convinced by his sudden attack of caution. There were other ways to stay ahead of fear, she was learning.

“Shhh,” she purred.

“It's gonna be all right, Sidarra. I promise you. Whatever happens. It's gonna be all right.”

“Shhhhh,” she purred again. “There are other places. Now I know. There are other ways. We have this.” Griff only grunted. His back felt tight against her skin. “Isn't this what you said about Saturn returns? That they're necessary trouble?”

Griff turned around to stare into her eyes. She admired how the sun reflected off the sand beneath them and still found the side of his face. “Maybe I did, but I was misinformed, remember? Thanks anyway.” And he kissed her lips gently.

In the taxi the next morning on the way to the airport, all the talking about Griff's bad feelings came down to a single ride. Griff spoke freely in the presence of a driver both of them knew could care less and would never see them again. Griff went over moves to make, tried out scenarios, and asked rhetorical questions about any identity thefts or investments that could be traced back to the Cicero Club. His mind fired rapidly, examining permutations of situations and what would happen if this, if that, and how to make things disappear. Breaking into a whisper, Griff finally mentioned Manny and the WeeWah connection. Yet because Tyrell was his client, Griff, even in Belize, wouldn't say his name.

Sidarra listened carefully. She sometimes chimed in with a steady remark or a correction of fact. But mostly she let him run the exercise both had been meaning to get to in their heads. By the time they got back on the plane home, they couldn't be too sure, but they were pretty sure they were outside of suspicion. A lot depended on Raul, of course. But a lot more depended on what Yakoob had done in the details. For that, they would have to wait till after his act early Tuesday night at the Full Count.

“Why were you and Raul arguing at my birthday party?” she finally asked Griff.

Griff squeezed her hand, but didn't remove his gaze from the airplane window. “He's a little maverick. He's starting to overstep the bounds, baby. Had to be checked.” She waited for Griff to tell her the truth before she said anything else. Then he looked into her eyes and added, “I don't share too well.”

She decided to let the issue go, but no matter what, as they sat quietly the rest of the plane ride, Griff's words continued making rounds in Sidarra's head. By the time the tires bounced onto the New York runway again, Sidarra was afraid she had figured out who killed the chancellor.

 

AS SOON AS YAKOOB PICKED UP THE MICROPHONE
and began his act, it was clear to Griff and Sidarra that he had not been reading the papers.

I'm trying to figure out what's happening with white folks using the word “man” so much with me. I don't know about you. But me, whenever I walk into someplace and there's some white guy working there, I know I'm 'bout to get called “man.” More than once. For all I know, it could be some private code for “nigger,” but I suppose they're just trying to be friendly. They always say it with a smile. Guy behind the counter at the liquor store. “How you doin' tonight, man?” “Can I help you find what you're looking for, man?” “All right, have a good night. Man.” It's too much. I can't trust that. Some of you remember they tried that shit in the seventies and it didn't work then.

You know what I think? I think white people—not white people, but white men above the age of about fourteen—white men have that word confused for some kind of password. I'm serious. I think they had one of those grand meetings and decided to go with it. You know, they had all the delegates at, like, the Republican National Convention take up the let's-call-black-guys-“man” plank. They discussed it, had
a few “nigga experts” come up and make some speeches, you know, “Call 'em all ‘man'!” they said. “We're gonna keep taking they shit, but from now on, we gonna call 'em ‘man'!”

The smile suddenly left Koob's face as he looked hard into the stage lights.

And there was nobody there to say, “Hey, hold up. That shit is corny. Them niggas is bound to know what's up.” Nobody to say that. So the word went out and they keep using it like they can't use it up. Like it makes some kinda difference. Like if you call me “man,” I won't keep wanting to blow your fucking brains out. But guess what? I'd probably kill 'em anyway. My boss. The president. Schools chancellor. Bank officer—I don't give a fuck. 'Cause, man, you don't wanna mess with this nigga right here.

Yakoob flashed a peace sign at the crowd and started off the stage.
Shit…a black man ain't got a friend in the world
.

Not only was all that unfunny as far as Sidarra and Griff were concerned, it was reckless, especially to say such things in the Full Count. They got up and went straight to the lounge. As soon as Yakoob made it to the back room, Sidarra let him know.

“So you're a dangerous motherfucker now, huh? Givin' white-boys a heads-up about you, huh? What kind of shit was that, Yakoob?”

He looked shocked to see his friends look at him that way. Griff gave him no help. “What do you mean? What's up? What'd I do?”

“Your bit, your set tonight, man, about all that ‘man' shit,” Griff explained. “That last part was foolish, Koob.”

Koob, squinting over his usual neon-colored velour warm-up suit, shook it off. “C'mon, dude, don't play me. Y'all ain't got nothing to say about my act. Y'all ain't funny. Y'all don't know nothin' about funny. That's my art. I'm not hearing that.”

“You damned sure better when you're running with me!” Sidarra told him.

Surprised and a little betrayed, Yakoob turned and faced her.
“How's my mouth your mouth all of a sudden, sistergirl? Why you got your fists up with me?”

“You should know better,” she said more quietly, but disgusted nonetheless. He still looked perplexed.

“You haven't followed it, Koob?” Griff asked seriously. “You have no fucking idea?”

Sidarra abruptly put up her hand so no one would speak, walked round the table, sat her ass smack down on the Amistad, and looked straight into Yakoob's eyes. “Koob, I want you to tell me why Raul killed my boss.”

Yakoob backed up and his eyes grew wide. Then he let his tight shoulders drop, walked in a half circle toward a stool, sat, removed his Kangol from his head, and started stroking his freshly minted cornrows. “Oh, okay, it's like that now.” He reached into his pocket for a Kool, lit it, and took a long drag. He fought the urge to look at Griff. “Look, Sid, we gotta do what we do to—”

“I do not want to hear
that
shit, nigga.”

“Hey, hey, I thought this was a ‘nigger'-free zone in here?”

“Not when we got nigga infestation going on,” she snapped. “Now, if you'd been reading the paper the last week or so, you'd know that Jack Eagleton's death is now considered a homicide, that he was probably poisoned by somebody who got into his house, and that that somebody had to be connected to some dope they call WeeWah.”

Yakoob just listened as smoke passed through his nostrils.

Griff spoke up in a low, calm voice. “And I happened to learn of at least one motherfucker who cooks WeeWah on the East Side and is now sitting in police custody at Bellevue Hospital, nursing a hole he got when three or four fools tried to take his shit.” Griff still would not mention his client, Tyrell, by name. “A cop was shot and three young men died, Koob. This guy's gonna be tried. A guy named Manny.”

“Manny?” Koob asked.

“Yeah.”

Koob looked at the floor. “Damn, I know Manny. If that's the same Manny, Manny's all right.”

“Not if Raul knows him, Koob,” Sidarra said. “Does Raul know him?”

“I never thought about it.” Koob scratched his scalp. “He might. Probably. Manny's from around my way, or he used to be. That's not my bag. I only used to know him. But, you know, Raul's kind of a resourceful motherfucker when he needs to be.”

“He's still a knucklehead,” said Sidarra.

Koob responded quickly. “So am I. So what? So they got Manny over whatever he's sellin' these days. He ain't sellin' that. He's selling morphine or meth or Ecstasy. If the chancellor dude died of that kind of shit, they'd
been
known about it, wouldn't they? I mean, nobody's gonna link some killer pothead to a spy-type murder just 'cause he knows a guy who got busted cookin' drugs. Where's the link? That shit makes no sense. We all right.”

“That's not right, what you're saying,” Sidarra said with a look of deep disappointment on her face. “C'mon, Koob.” She grabbed the top of her thighs and leaned in toward him, exasperated. “What is that?” She slapped her legs in disbelief. “We never played for that kind of shit. Who told Raul to go and assassinate the goddamned schools chancellor, Koob?”

Koob sat up and crossed his arms. Then he slowly and deliberately turned toward Griff to see if he dared to add anything. He didn't and Yakoob turned back to Sidarra. “Baby, I think you know he do shit. Raul's like an entrepreneur now. You don't have to tell him shit exactly.”